If I Freeze
by Neva
Summary: Fairly standard Iceman musings about his friendships and relationships at Xavier's. X2 spoilers. Rating for slight language.


A/N: I loved every second of X2, but I have to say that Iceman is now officially on my list of favorites. This story contains all my usual preoccupations: romance, angst, human/mutant tensions, and maybe even a touch of anti-Xavier. It all depends on how you look at it. And speaking of how you look at things, passages in italics are flashbacks. Just in case anyone was confused.

Disclaimer: I own no X-Men, quotes, etc. Bobby, however, has a permanent spot in my Happy Place.

Dedication: For my sister, Rachel, who got me into this mess in the first place.

"I should get a codename, like they have," my roommate at Xavier's School said to me a few weeks back, as he flicked his lighter open and shut, open and shut. "How sweet would that be? And I'll go by it all the time. I'm not like you, I don't have anything to lose. 'I'm Pyro. John Allardyce doesn't exist anymore.' How's that sound?" I don't remember feeling anything at the time, except wondering how a person could just decide that their old self was gone forever.

_I'm thirteen, walking home from school, thinking about soccer and this girl Carrie who smiled me in the hallway today and whether or not Ronny knows that I broke his radio antenna. What I should really be thinking about is the report card in my pocket, the one that calls me "gifted but reluctant to apply himself" and the one that I have to get signed and bring back at the end of the week, the one that's going to make my mother demand an explanation and make my dad sulk at the dinner table. He's not going to say it, but he's going to wonder what he did wrong.  
_

I guess Dad's never been able to take his own faults and mistakes well. Being told that he was the one responsible for my being (_shhh_) the way I am must have been the fatal blow. But someone had to say it, and the other three of us, even Logan in his own way, cared much too much about not getting thrown out of the house right then and there.

I'm talking to myself again. Sitting on the steps during my only free period, staring out at the grounds, and talking to myself. I can't exactly tell if it's warm out or now — for me, temperature has become a little more relative in the past year or so — but the sun is shining and the windows were open in class today. On any other day as nice as this, they would be alive with shouts and laughter and catcalls, maybe a some of that puke-inducing music from Tracy's boom box. Maybe Kitty would be sitting over by the fountain while Peter sketched her; maybe Artie would be in the tire swing.

Maybe John would be sitting next to me right now, trying to scam algebra answers off of me. "C'mon, you owe me one," he'd say. When in fact, that's so not the case. "Or, how about this, Drake. I'll owe _you_ one. I didn't get this at all."

"Bobby Drake doesn't exist anymore." This is the second time I've said it, only now it seems more like I'm talking to him, once my best friend, now I don't know what. My enemy? My _enemy_. Seriously, now. Yeah, I know, he went and joined the dark side, but I don't know what makes me madder: knowing that he's working for someone who tried to kill the girl I didn't even know yet that I loved or that I didn't realize sooner that he was thinking along those lines, maybe even before Magneto escaped.

"Bobby Drake is _no more_." That one sounds good, too. Maybe even better than the first. There's a desert, an ocean, a galaxy of differences between the person I am now and the one I was for the first fifteen years of my life, even between me now and who I was the last time I visited my parents. I almost died more than once in the past, what, the past _week_? And more importantly, I found out what it was like, really like, to lose someone I

But even though I feel about her the way I do, I mean, the way I just almost said I did, then how can I tell her any of this? Answer: I can't. Which is why I'm saying it to myself. "No more," I whisper. "No more, no more. I'm Iceman now."

_I'm fifteen and a half. It's my second night at the school. We're sitting on the couch watching The Simpsons, and I start doing my imitation of Homer that used to crack Ronny up so much. The kid next to me rolls his eyes and makes a face. I ask if he has a problem with me, and he says, _Yeah, that imitation sucks._ Long story short, he ends up with frozen clothes. I look at my handiwork and start laughing. He looks all psyched up to torch me where I'm standing, but then Mr. Summers rushes in and marches us down the Professor's office. And when even he can't hide a smile, John starts to see the funny side of it himself. Another long story short, we ask to room together when the next semester starts. Later, he tells me that he wasn't all that bothered by what I'd done. _Not a lot bothers me_, he boasts.  
_

And then the words become a string of curses. Maybe part of the problem is thinking I'm so _special_, I mean, we've all had bad dreams the last few nights. I caught Rogue yawning all through History yesterday, and when I asked her what was wrong, she whispered, "I couldn't sleep last night." 'Nuff said. I know Ms. Munroe heard us, but she didn't do more than glance in our direction. Artie screamed loud enough last night to bring me, Peter, and Mr. Summers rushing into his room. I think even Professor Xavier hasn't been sleeping too great lately. I lost people, Cyclops lost people, and I guess Xavier lost I don't know, _himself_, maybe.

But I don't want to think about him now. Not about how he convinced me that it would be best to lie to my parents, not about how he wrote my friend off so easily, not about how he filled our brains with all this stupid shit about how we're heroes in the making. None of it.

I won't think about my family. How the police coming just at that moment was like punishment for letting them know what I was later instead of sooner. Stupid, but hey, our newest recruit is a blue fuzzy demon who prays over his meals. I won't think about how I looked back once as we walked away afterward, how I saw the three of them looking back at me, family portrait minus one. All three of them were staring at me like I was someone they'd never seen before. Which, I guess, I wasn't.

_No more_.

Each time I feel the urge to call and apologize, I squash it. What, what, what the hell would I say to them. _Sorry I stole Nana's gloves? Sorry I almost got us all killed? Sorry that, no, I never tried not being a mutant?  
_  
I'd practiced telling them a thousand different ways, imagined it a thousand different times. No matter what Xavier said, I thought they had a right to know. I knew they wouldn't be thrilled, so I expected self-blame and astonishment and fear and dumb questions. What I wasn't ready for was being told that they still loved me, and knowing, even though I tried not to, that she meant it. But I'm not going to think about that, either.

I'll think about Rogue instead. About how we kissed in my room, lightly enough at first so it didn't hurt me, and then I lost myself in my most perfect fantasy come true and pressed against her harder and longer and it was only when I realized that I couldn't breathe that I remembered how real it was. But even if we never got to have a moment like that one again, it was worth it. It was _perfect_. I'll think about how I held her hand, tight tight tight, as pain ripped through both of us, wanting those green eyes to be the last thing I ever saw.

_It's just a few days after my seventeenth birthday. I went home to celebrate. And now I'm back, and John's dyed his hair blond and given me a Blues Traveler CD, which he kindly informs me that he couldn't pick out with a straight face. And there's a new girl sitting across from me in my first class of the day. She doesn't look like a mutant any more than I do, and now I'm looking for clues to her powers — it's a game my friends and I play sometimes with new kids — and now I can't look away. She didn't talk to anyone on her way in, just stared at the floor. Something's off with this girl, and it's more than the shock of her powers manifesting. It's not something that pushes me away, it's something that pulls me closer, makes me feel different and reckless, even if "reckless" for the moment means shaping a rose out of ice in the middle of class and handing it to her.  
_

I need her to come out here and sit down next to me now. I mean, I know she's in class, but I need it anyway. I need to tell her how none of this seems real, how I _know_ that all over the world, kids even younger than I am are being forced to kill and die for their countries. I _know_ that I made my own choice to get involved. I want to tell her that I _know_ I keep saying, _Bobby Drake is no more, he doesn't exist anymore_, but I can't make myself believe it.

I need her to sit next to me and rest her head carefully on my shoulder. I need her to say, _I still have some of his thoughts in here_, and tap her forehead a couple of times. I need her to say, _He loved you like a brother_. I need her to say, _I understand_. All the things I know she'd say if she was right here with me.

I _need_ to know it's true, in the same way I _want_ to not need anything, to not feel anything, ever again.

_It's a couple of months ago. I've finished telling Rogue the story of how my powers first surfaced (I was nervous about exams, and if you don't think that's enough, you've never had Mrs. Wylde for chemistry), a story that seems pretty dull and harmless next to hers. I'm staring at that white streak in her hair. _A battle scar_, she called it once she was able to talk about the whole thing. _A badge of honor_, I correct her now. _A reminder that no matter what they throw at you, no matter how they try to use you, you're a survivor._ She blushes, so of course I add, _And it's damn sexy, too._ That makes her blush harder. I tell her how I never once told my parents what I was, and how hard it could be keeping something so huge from people you love.  
_

Since then, I've learned that her parents tried to have her exorcised — apparently they're very big on that in the South — when they'd first learned what she'd done to that David guy. But the only thing she said to me at the time was, _Duh, Bobby, of course you feel alone. We all do._ One hand was touching the metal dog tags around her neck, but the other hand had slipped into mine.

After that, it only got easier to talk to her. But we haven't spoken since we got back to the mansion. Normally, I know who I would go to for romantic advice. (Then again, he'd probably tell me I was being a wuss-bucket.) But something tells me that this goes far beyond what makes girls tick and how to wind them up. It's more than communication. We'll get back to that eventually. It's about not letting everything we've built together go to hell.

I need to be myself for her like I want to be Iceman for the rest of the world.

"No more," I whisper one last time, but I don't really know that the words mean anymore. I'll cut all ties with my family and my past? I'll stop thinking or acting a certain way? I'll stop caring? _What_?

Someone help me. I'm no good at this.

I look out over the grounds again. On any other day as nice as this, this place would be _alive_.

John, I guess I could try it your way, but I don't think it'll work. And even though I'm so pissed off at you right now for ditching us — don't think I'm not — and even though I _know_ that "No more" would probably be the best choice right now I miss you, man. But I guess you got that.


End file.
